Mainers have been in pain for years, imposed by Democrats. Maine is at a tipping point – 10,000 drug overdoses a year, 40 to 70 kids dead a month, mass trafficker presence; 8,000 illegals with housing and benefits as Mainers lose homes to intolerable taxes; 75,000 illegals coming to a declared “sanctuary state,” kids left behind, Maine schools now 50 of 50. Mainers are angry.
The cavalry is coming, but look at the data. Unaccountable, uncaring, arrogant leadership explains it all. This is not ideology, not partisanship, just pure fact. Take those issues in order, here’s the why.
Drug Traffickers and Organized Crime. Maine has been targeted. Big league criminal groups – the Dominican, Mexican, Chinese, and domestic traffickers in drugs and humans – go to weakness. Maine advertises weakness, full stop.
Hundreds of bills are introduced by Democrats – who control the state – each session in the legislature to obscure, minimize, excuse, and decriminalize crime. They pass many of them.
Examples are legion, erasing penalties, freeing felons, eliminating bail, hobbling law enforcement, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for major drug traffickers, damning the police, replacing deterrence with brazen appeasement.
Word gets out. Maine’s unaccountable, untruthful, appeasing Democrats own all this. They have turned criminals into the victims, police into villains, and now open the door to 75,000 illegal aliens – beyond the current 8,000 – by forcing Maine into “sanctuary state” status. Abomination.
Compounding the punishment and pressure on those who keep us safe, rewarding courage with penalties, demotions, investigations, threats to pensions, is devastating. Maine Democrats in power are a disgrace, have become opponents of those who put on a badge, vest, and gun every day to fight evil. That has to stop.
From Kittery to the top of the state, traffickers abound. They sell the drugs that trap, create suffering, and produce all this death. I have seen it. I talk to the kids, mourning parents. Traffickers are empowered by this governor and legislature, catch and release, until no more catches.
Why do police pull back? Because they are underfunded, underappreciated, authorities take, punish for good police work, make a case, and it never gets brought. Indefensible.
The State police have not seen an ad for northern patrols in 48 years, and local police are drying up. Illegal Chinese “grow houses” and traffickers in fentanyl, meth, heroin and crack-cocaine – kilos – go unprosecuted. Intolerable.
Maine’s feckless, incompetent state attorney general soundproofs his office with taxpayer dollars when his personal behavior comes under fire and sues oil companies, rather than ridding Maine of dangerous organized crime.
Why? He is tight with Maine’s belligerently anti-conservative, anti-Trump, pro-tax-and-spend governor and her circle, including Democrat blame bidders, Hannah Pingree and Shenna Bellows.
What is behind this? Power for power’s sake, the way legacy names do in politics, plus a radical national agenda alien to Mainers, and pure public corruption.
Public corruption? Yes, everywhere in Augusta. Just check the state audit – $2.1 billion in questionable, uncompleted contracts to friends and family. Ask why no criminal referrals? And why no investigation of those near the governor selling drug houses to Chinese traffickers for cash?
Illegal Aliens, False Asylum Seekers. Maine has roughly 8,000 illegal aliens, non-citizens with felony records or who entered illegally. While visa holders and refugees are welcome, not lawbreakers.
Before Obama and Biden, a legal asylum seeker needed a “well-founded fear of persecution” individualized to them. If a political dissident or someone facing religious persecution, they could apply, remain in a third country, and in time secure entry – legally.
Under Obama and Biden, aided by leftist groups of the Maine Democrat cut, illegals only had to say “I want asylum” or just break in, cross illegally, and they were in.
Now, Mainers face an inflow of what Democrats hope is 75,000 new illegals. They just made Maine – against the majority – a “sanctuary state.” More crime? Illegal voting? Where does it stop?
Intolerable Taxes, Educational Misery. In the process of running for governor, you visit people, absorb their concerns. Guess what? Every visit, call, and conversation goes to taxes and affordability.
Why? People cannot take it anymore – the highest property taxes in the country, higher and higher spending, mismanaged budgets, mandates on towns, schools, falling margins, businesses struggling to comply with suffocating regulations, and new taxes. Unsustainable.
If people were not screaming, they are now. Democrats just raised individual and corporate taxes again – on Mainers unable to afford heat, prescription drugs, and homes. Those under 35 are unable to buy or rent a home, median monthly income $200 below the median rent costs.
Democrats just raised corporate income taxes to 10 percent, personal to 8.75 percent for those over $61,600 – whom they consider “rich,” these out-of-touch legislators. Add an utter abandonment of teachers, students, shops, and quality education, and you have misery.
Bottom line: If there were a manual on how to destroy a state, drive businesses and young people out, replace them with drug traffickers, illegals, and dependents, then kill the schools – taking hope away – Maine Democrats are following it to a “T.” Mainers have been in pain. This is a tipping point.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
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